Storm is looking for a Monster too

Well the slide continues as the Storm were thrashed 5-0 by the Dolphins on Saturday night. The team has now lost 5 straight games in which they have given up 16 goals and only scored 3. It's hard to say who stood out in the game - at least from a positive stand point. In the early going of the season the Storm was out shooting their opponents but not any more.

The team badly needs a leader to step up and take charge. The players have to show more of a commitment to a team concept. Otherwise this could turn out to be a long long season.

Well there is always room for hope. Cause we play Leaside on Sunday!

Phil Kessel, welcome to the Toronto Fish Bowl

Goalie masks from the past

Gerry Cheevers

Doug Favell

Mik Palmateer

Ken Dryfen

Bunny Laroque

Kelly Hrudy

Curtis Joseph

Andy Moog

Nikolia Khabibulin

Any Leaf goalie

The goalie mask celebrates its 50th anniversary

The media provided extensive coverage this weekend to the 50th anniversary of the date Jacques Plante got fed up with getting hit in the face. As result he revolutionized goaltending by putting on a goalie mask.

Plante was not the first to wear a mask. That distinction goes to Hall of Fame goalie Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons in 1930. He wore some contraption on his face that sort of looked like a mask after his nose was broken by a Howie Morenz shot.

Before the mask, goaltenders moved their bodies to get their feet in front of shots. After, it became far more common for them to drop to their knees, fan their legs to the posts and get their torsos in the way of pucks or to dive headlong into goalmouth scrambles to cover the puck. Those are movements that barefaced goalies did at great risk. I remember when I was young many goalies pinned down in their crease actually lifting their heads to block shots.

Fast forward to November 1, 1959 and Plante's face was sliced open on a backhand shot by Andy Bathgate. Goalies would just get stitched up and within 15 minutes be back in the net. But on that night Plante, who had been using a mask in practice, came back out with his mask. Montreal coach, Toe Blake, was adamant that he wouldn't allow his goalie to wear a mask in a game but that night he had no choice. Plante had refused to return to the game without it.

The rest is history.

Storm defeats Storm?

OK, this is something we will have to get used to over the course of the season. Anyway, our Storm team lost to their Storm team by a score of 3-1. The game was very evenly matched for two periods until our Storm team ran out of gas. Their Storm team took advantage of 4 penalties and scored 2 goals to break a 1-1 tie. The two goals were scored in the last 3 minutes of the game. Our only goal was scored by Caitlin who slowly becoming our major offensive threat.

The third period collapse was quite understandable considering the fact that we had not played a game in 2 weeks. The team looked rusty but hung in there for the first two periods. We also were out shot 14-11 which was the first time this season that we gave up more shots than we took.

Next game will be against Etobicoke in a week from now.

Happy Halloween!

Lost in the translation

Coyotes having success on the ice but not in the box office

The Phoenix Coyotes are 8-4-0 to start the season with the 6th best record in the Western Conference. If they continue to get great goaltending from Ilya Bryzgalov (G.A.A. 1.77) they will be a playoff contender.

However, drawing fans to the games has been a struggle. They are last in the NHL in attendance with an average crowd of 10,700 which likely includes many comp tickets. If you exclude the season opener which was a "sell out" (tickets were being sold for $15) the average game draws only 9,000. With an average ticket price of $37 the typical gate is only about $250,000. But there payroll works out to about $1 million per home game. Then there is rent and all their other expenses.

You would think that no one could be interest in this money pit. But apparently there is interest. The Globe reports that Ice Edge Holdings is ready to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and the sale could be completed in the near future. Howard Sokolowski and David Cynamon, co-owners of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts are supposedly also interested in the team.

One can only conclude that any purchase comes with a commitment to allow the team to move to a more economically viable city. Not likely Hamilton though.

Today's Maple Leaf Rant

I'm tired of the characterization that the Toronto Maple Leaf owners are not interested in winning, that their loyalty is with the bottom line, that they don't care about the fans, yada, yada yada. This is well chronicled in the recent book Leafs Abomination: The Dismayed Fans' Handbook to Why the Leafs Stink and How they Can Rise Again, by Dave Feschuk and Michael Grange.

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund may be inept and lack any visibility but I don't believe they are not committed to winning. They are not the corporate version of Harold Ballard. Since the took control of the franchise the Fund has struggled to find the right person to run the franchise. Prior to the lockout they handed the reigns over Ken Dryden, Pat Quinn and John Ferguson Jr. The Leafs were one of the biggest spenders in the NHL leading up to the lockout which allowed them to maintain competitive and gloss over weak management. In the year leading up to the lockout the Leaf payroll was $70 US million ($100 CDN million) which hardly sounds like an organization not committed to winning.

Leaving the teams in the hands of a pretty green GM following the lockout was a huge mistake. But again the owners once again showed that they wanted to turn the team around by openly searching for the best manager that was available in the marketplace. Certainly there are better managers than Brian Burke but it stands to show whether any of them were available or interested in the Leafs' job. MLSE made a huge monetary committed to Burke and provided significant funding to rebuild the scouting and management team.

Fan impatience is understandable at this point in time but not really helpful. The team has decided not to rebuild through the draft the way that the Penguins, Capitals and Blackhawks have been built. Let's face it, the Leafs haven't made the playoffs in 4 years and a slow rebuild could easily stretch their non-playoff status to 8 years. However, this mess cannot be turned around as quickly as fans would like. So relax and wait to see what Burke can do. It's way too early to write him off.

The more frustrated fans always call for a boycott of the Leafs as a way to punish management for not delivering a winner. They are convinced with empty seats in the ACC, the owners will finally become serious about building a winner. This just nonsense. The GTA has over 5 million people with many of them avid hockey fans. The largest hockey market in the world isn't just going walk away from the game.

Okay, I'm done my rant.

There have been some nasty hits in the NHL this week

Florida's David Booth was looking back as he was making a drop pass when he gets hit by the Flyers' Mike Richards knocking him out cold. Richards was given a five-minute major for interference and a game misconduct. The league may be looking at a suspension.




Then there was Carolina's Tuomo Ruutu who was suspended by the NHL for three games after his hit from behind on Colorado's Darcy Tucker.



Anaheim forward Evgeni Artyukhin took out Dallas defenseman Matt Niskanen with a slew-foot. While the on-ice officials didn't notice the play, the NHL did. Artyukhin was suspended three games for the hit.



Canucks defenseman Willie Mitchell came out of the penalty box and found himself in a position to catch Blackhawks forward Jonathan Toews with his head down, and used that opportunity to deliver a crushing (and what appears to be a clean) open-ice hit.



Finally, Alex Ovechkin shows another part of his dirty side, slew-footing Rich Peverley. He got fined for the play, but in my opinion, he should have gotten a suspension. It was quite a week for hits.

Goalie Guru Francois Allaire not having much impact yet

From looking at the Maple Leaf goaltending situation, it doesn't appear the team is reaping any benefits from signing Francois Allaire over the summer to work with the goalies. Allaire is known for his work with Patrick Roy and for developing Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Jonas Hiller in Anaheim. He can't be happy with his start with the Maple Leafs.

The reality is that it takes a long time for a goalie coach to reap his rewards. It's early in the season so Allaire and the goalies have likely only had time to work on how to practice, how to do different drills and prepare for games. It probably has been too early to talk about changing styles. Injuries to the team's top two goalies has only slowed that process further.

But in Leaf Nation patience is definitely in short supply. Still Allaire has to be having an impact eventually. The question will Toronto still be a position to gain a playoff berth when it does happen.

There may be a goalie worse than Vesa Toskala